Ever wondered why some emails get delivered to your inbox, and others end up in the spam folder, or even vanish?
Well, email deliverability is why. And, it's not just about sending great emails. But, also the deliverability rate of your email service provider (ESP) tool.
While following best practices has the greatest impact on email deliverability, we’ve found that your choice of ESP can also influence whether your emails will be delivered inbox or land in spam. So, ensuring your email gets to your subscribers' inboxes requires a combination of implementing non-spammy practices, and choosing an ESP with solid deliverability rates.
In this article, we'll discuss the email deliverability rate of ActiveCampaign. You'll gain insights from our latest deliverability test results and also learn best practices for maintaining an excellent deliverability rate.
Let's get started!
What is Email Deliverability?
If you think email deliverability means your emails get delivered to your recipients, you're not wrong. But, you're only half right. That's actually just email delivery.
Email deliverability, email delivery – what’s the difference? Well, here's the deal.
Email deliverability is the ability of your email to be delivered to your recipients’ inboxes. This includes the main inbox, social folder, or promotions tab. On the other hand, email delivery is when your emails are successfully sent to the receiving server, even when it lands in the spam box. This measures the proportion of emails that didn’t bounce against the proportion of emails that did (read more about how to calculate email delivery rate.)
ActiveCampaign Deliverability Rate: January 2024 Email Deliverability Test Insights
In our latest email deliverability test (January 2024), ActiveCampaign achieved an impressive deliverability rate of 94.2%.
And guess what? Out of all the tools we tested in this round, ActiveCampaign's deliverability rate ranked the highest, earning it our Best Email Deliverability Tool award.
| EMAIL MARKETING TOOL | MAIN INBOX % | TABS % | SPAM % | MISSING % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | 83.8 | 9.4 | 3.8 | 3.1 |
However, looking back at previous tests, the deliverability rate isn't that surprising. Over the years, ActiveCampaign has consistently scored a deliverability rate of over 90%, and thereby always ranked among our top 5 ESPs with high deliverability rates.
Now, let's dig into more details from the results of our January email deliverability test.
The analysis of where exactly emails get delivered revealed that 84.4% of the emails sent using ActiveCampaign landed in the primary inbox. 9.9% got delivered in the secondary tabs, while 4.1% went undelivered, and only a mere 1.7% were flagged as spam.
| EMAIL MARKETING TOOL | MAIN INBOX % | TABS % | SPAM % | MISSING % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | 84.4 | 9.9 | 4.1 | 1.7 |
Pretty impressive, but there's more. ActiveCampaign email deliverability also performed excellently with each of the four main email providers:
Gmail: When it comes to delivering emails to Gmail accounts, ActiveCampaign consistently delivered 100% of emails to inboxes in our tests. It has performed less than 100% only thrice in the past 7 years.
Yahoo: Similarly, deliverability to Yahoo email inboxes has consistently been 100% over the years (including the latest test). Its lowest deliverability rate was 82%, scored in March 2021.
Microsoft: As for Microsoft email providers (Outlook and Hotmail), ActiveCampaign had a deliverability rate of 100% in our latest testing. A great improvement from the 97.4% scored in June 2023.
Aol: Lastly, ActiveCampaign deliverability to AOL emails has been 100% in the last 5 tests – an excellent improvement from the 7.1% recorded in the very first test in August 2017.
Additionally, besides the excellent deliverability rate, ActiveCampaign offers several other features that will help you create successful email marketing campaigns. You can check out our detailed ActiveCampaign review here.
Our Email Deliverability Test Process
Since August 2017, we've been conducting email deliverability tests bi-annually to gain valuable insights into the deliverability rate of various email service providers including ActiveCampaign.
Our email deliverability testing tool of choice is GlockApps. It helps us determine how well each email marketing tool performs in delivering emails to the four main email providers – Gmail, Microsoft (Outlook and Hotmail), Yahoo, and AOL.
According to our methodology, the email deliverability rate is calculated as the proportion of emails delivered to recipients' inboxes or other tabs. Emails that go missing or are sent to the spam box are not counted within the deliverability rate.
The results and ratings? A deliverability rate of 89% or above earns a provider an “excellent” rating. Rates from 83% to 88% are considered acceptable, while anything below 83% falls into the “poor” category.
One important point to understand is that our tests use ActiveCampaign’s shared IPs, not dedicated ones. Therefore, the outcomes of our tests are more applicable to small-to-medium businesses that also use shared IPs, rather than high-volume senders who utilize dedicated IPs and have been conducting email marketing campaigns for some time. While ActiveCampaign does provide high-volume senders with the opportunity to acquire dedicated IPs, the results may differ significantly from our own experiences.
ActiveCampaign vs. Constant Contact
In our latest email deliverability test, ConstantContact had a deliverability rate of 91.7%, coming in second place. Also, only 2.5% of emails sent landed in spam, compared to ActiveCampaign’s 4.1%. And looking back, Constant Contact beat ActiveCampaign in our April 2022 deliverability test.
However, ActiveCampaign has been more consistent in getting higher deliverability rates. Its average deliverability rate (92.42%) in the last 5 rounds outperformed that of ConstantContact (90.88%).
Furthermore, in our latest round of tests, 3.5 times more emails went missing using Constant Contact (5.8%) than ActiveCampaign (1.7%). In total, 8.3% of emails didn’t land inbox using Constant Contact compared to 5.8% for ActiveCampaign.
Bottom line?
While ConstantContact has an excellent deliverability rate that would get your emails delivered to your subscriber’s inbox, ActiveCampaign is still the best choice ESP for higher deliverability.
ActiveCampaign Deliverability Features
ActiveCampaign has a strong deliverability infrastructure that ensures most of your emails are delivered to your subscriber's inbox. Let's take a look at the features that make this possible.
Domain Authentication
Authenticating your domain is crucial for maintaining a positive sender reputation, and is now a requirement for getting emails delivered to Gmail and Yahoo. ActiveCampaign simplifies the process by enabling you to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC directly within the platform. This prevents your email from being flagged as spam and boosts your deliverability.
You can learn more about domain authentication here.
Email List Hygiene
Sending emails to a clean and engaged list maximizes email deliverability. With ActiveCampaign's automation tool, you can manage your list hygiene effortlessly. You can set up automated workflows that review and remove inactive or unengaged subscribers from your list automatically. This keeps your list updated with only subscribers genuinely interested in your content.
Spam Check
Avoiding the spam folder is important for high deliverability. ActiveCampaign analyzes your emails for elements that might trigger spam filters. Additionally, the built-in spam check feature suppresses addresses that often click the spam button so they don't receive future emails from you.
Engagement Tools
Active Campaign offers tools for email segmentation and personalization, which drive engagement and enhance deliverability. With these tools, you can create targeted segments and send personalized emails that are relevant to each subscriber. This helps you build a stronger connection and reduce the chances of unsubscribes and spam reports, ultimately increasing your deliverability.
Easy Unsubscribe
A difficult unsubscribe process can turn off subscribers and affect your sender’s reputation. ActiveCampaign allows you to include an opt-out link at the top and bottom of every email to make it easier for unengaged subscribers to unsubscribe easily. Hence, they'll be less likely to report your emails as spam, and your deliverability rate will be protected.
Monitoring Tools
Monitoring helps you stay on top of your campaign performance. ActiveCampaign monitoring tools enable you to track key email metrics like click, open, and bounce rates. With these, you'll know exactly what's working (or not) and can optimize your strategies to improve deliverability.
Tips To Improve Your Email Deliverability Rate
Sure, ActiveCampaign's deliverability rate will help improve the chances of your emails getting delivered to your subscriber's inbox. However, deliverability isn't just about your email service provider. You also have to do your part to maintain a high deliverability rate. This means implementing the following email deliverability best practices.
Build A List, Don't Buy
It's tempting to want to take shortcuts and buy a list. But, it's a bad idea that will result in poor deliverability. The contacts on the list didn't consent to receiving your emails and would more likely hit unsubscribe or report your email as spam.
So, resist the temptation to buy an email list. Instead, focus on building a quality list from scratch – through subscription and lead magnet opt-ins. And, don't forget to set up a double opt-in to confirm that your subscribers are truly interested in being on your list.
Avoid Spammy Language
Certain words and phrases can trigger spam filters to send your emails to the spam folder. Be careful not to use overly promotional words like “free,” “win,” “earn money,” and “cash bonus” too often in your content. Also, avoid all CAPS subject lines with excessive punctuation or emojis.
Just keep your content simple and relevant. Send interesting content tailored to your subscribers and encourage them to reply, click links, and take action. But don’t be too pushy. Instead, build a relationship that will improve engagement and increase your deliverability.
Send emails on a regular schedule
Theoretically, there's no limit to the volume of emails you can send. However, you have to be mindful of how often you send emails to your list. Sending too many emails too fast can trigger spam filters, especially if you haven't been doing so previously.
For instance, if you've been sending one email per week, it would be suspicious if you started sending two emails per day. So, try to stick to a regular sending schedule. You can slowly increase your volume over time, as your engagement level grows. For instance, moving from one email per week to twice or thrice per week.
Final Thoughts: ActiveCampaign Email Deliverability Rate
That's it! Everything you need to know about ActiveCampaign's current deliverability rate. Insights from our email deliverability test indicate that emails you send with ActiveCampaign can have a higher chance of landing in subscribers’ inboxes than with other email service providers.
Moreover, ActiveCampaign has several features that help improve email deliverability, such as domain authentication setup, spam check tools, and more. But remember, you also need to follow best practices to maintain an excellent deliverability rate.
So, if you're interested in getting more of your emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes, use ActiveCampaign for your email marketing campaigns.
If you'd rather first find out the deliverability of your email campaigns before deciding, sign up for the EmailTooltester Deliverability Audit. Our experts will run two to three separate deliverability tests and provide actionable recommendations to improve your deliverability.
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This article has been written and researched following our EmailTooltester methodology.
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